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Genius on the Edge: The Bizarre Double Life of Dr. William Stewart Halsted 1st Edition
| Gerald Imber (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
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Halsted was born to wealth and privilege in New York City in the mid-1800s. He attended the finest schools, but he was a mediocre student. His academic interests blossomed at medical school and he quickly became a celebrated surgeon. Experimenting with cocaine as a local anesthetic, he became addicted. He was hospitalized and treated with morphine to control his craving for cocaine. For the remaining 40 years of his life he was addicted to both drugs.
Halsted resurrected his career at Johns Hopkins, where he became the first chief of surgery. Among his accomplishments, he introduced the residency training system, the use of sterile gloves, the first successful hernia repair, radical mastectomy, fine silk sutures, and anatomically correct surgical technique. Halsted is without doubt the father of modern surgery, and his eccentric behavior, unusual lifestyle, and counterintuitive productivity in the face of lifelong addiction make his story unusually compelling.
Gerald Imber, a renowned surgeon himself, evokes Halsteds extraordinary life and achievements and places them squarely in the historical and social context of the late 19th century. The result is an illuminating biography of a complex and troubled man, whose genius we continue to benefit from today.
- ISBN-101607146274
- ISBN-13978-1607146278
- Edition1st
- PublisherKaplan Publishing
- Publication dateFebruary 2, 2010
- LanguageEnglish
- Dimensions6.25 x 1.25 x 9.5 inches
- Print length412 pages
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About the Author
Dr. Imber has published many scientific papers and is a regular lecturer at professional meetings. He is also the author of a number of “beauty books” and has written on many subjects for varied publications such as Departures, and The Wall Street Journal, and appears regularly on network television.
Product details
- Publisher : Kaplan Publishing; 1st edition (February 2, 2010)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 412 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1607146274
- ISBN-13 : 978-1607146278
- Item Weight : 1.5 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.25 x 1.25 x 9.5 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,226,847 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #789 in General Surgery
- #1,541 in History of Medicine (Books)
- #2,416 in Medical Professional Biographies
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Gerald Imber, M.D., is a graduate of the State University of New York Medical College and was trained in plastic surgery at the New York Hospital Cornell Medical College, where he maintains a professional affiliation as a plastic surgeon and clinical assistant professor of surgery. He lives in New York City.
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Virtually all of us need to say a silent "thank you" to Halsted. Without the innovations he painstakingly thought and practiced through, implemented, and trained others to follow, a lot of us, and a lot of our loved-ones, wouldn't be alive right now. Halsted and his colleagues at the then-newly-created Johns Hopkins genuinely, and for the most part literally, brought medicine into the 20th Century. The advancement of medicine between, say 1890 and 1920 is breathtaking. And Halsted was at the forefront, alongside Ostler and preceding Cushing. (Both, by the way, subjects of wonderful biographies by Michael Bliss, both highly recommended and both readily available: William Osler: A Life in Medicine ; Harvey Cushing: A Life in Surgery .)
Halsted provides a challenge to the biographer: He was reticent and secretive. He shunned publicity. His largest body of personal correspondence was addressed to his wife, who's sister destroyed all of his letters after his wife's death. His colleagues mostly honored his privacy and, in most cases, didn't know much about the private man themselves. What Imber has done is really kind of amazing considering the lack of primary material: He has presented us with a surprisingly full portrait, all things considered. To fill in some of the unavoidable void, he creates a deep-focused backdrop Halsted's contemporaries and times.
While it would be nice to have a clearer picture of exactly how Halsted's addictions affected his personal and professional lives, not even most of his colleagues were unaware of the addiction and/or the extent of his usage. Imber presents what is known, but wisely avoids either speculation or damnation. Some enigmas will just have to stay enigmas.
The only real weakness here, as far as I'm concerned, is Imber's decision to organize the books by topic. This is not necessarily a problem, but in this case it results in a good-deal of time-jumping, backward and forward and I would periodically find myself confused when beginning a new chapter and suddenly finding myself several years in the past. While I was generally able to get my bearings pretty quickly, there were a number of times when I was confused for several pages before realizing, "oh, it's 1902 again," or some such. Imber covers a lot of ground here, in terms of medical and social history and the persons involved and so I can appreciate the decision, but a few marking posts here and there would have helped.
Unlike a couple of other reviewers, I did not find the medical terminology bothersome and Imber does a good job of giving a quick thumbnail for most of the terms and procedures his audience are likely to stumble over. He also provides modern terminology for conditions and procedures now known by different terms. That was handy.
In all, a very good read. I learned a great deal - both about Halsted himself, and his place in the fascinating world of medical history. And as someone who has gone under the knife on a few occasions: Thank you, Doctor Halsted. I'm glad to be alive.
My opinion is that the truth is more complicated and more interesting. Halsted was great despite his addictions, but they clearly influenced his personality, his relationship with patients, with his peers, and his character as a teacher. Nevertheless, what he and his colleagues created at Johns Hopkins Hospital formed a pattern that the rest of us training in surgery a century later still follow, and from which we benefited immeasurably.
This book is well-written and obviously the product of enormous research. It will interest not only physicians and surgeons, who should never forget their past, but non-medical readers who may not know the fascinating story of the seemingly primitive advances, so obvious to us – – like disinfecting wounds and wearing gloves during surgery – – that created Medicine as we know it today.
Top reviews from other countries
A gem in every surgeons library.







